Kaya 959 Reporter
The City of Tshwane has began taking action on businesses and entities that owe the exorbitant amounts in rates and taxes.
The City has said that at this stage it was owed more than R17 billion in rates, taxes, water, and electricity bills, which is debt that has accrued since before 2016.
Point of View with Phemelo Motene recently had a Q & A with Tshwane’s MMC of Finance Peter Sutton who spoke about the new collection campaign #TshwaneYaTima.
He shed light on why it was important that the City acted to recover the up to R 17,2 billion owed to the city by entities as well as residents.
On the billing problem
Sutton says one of the problems with the billing process is that residents of the city tend to stop paying for other services as soon as they launch a dispute of their rates and taxes.
“If you have a dispute on an account for a service like electricity, only that service or the specific amount owing is disputed. All other services are payable and all other amounts after the dispute are payable.”
Also Read: Muvhango’s Gabriel Temudzani celebrates his birthday in Dubai
On the accumulation of the R17 Billion Debt
Sutton highlighted some of the reasons the City found itself being owed such a massive amount.
“I think we need to be honest, there’s a couple of reasons. I think our credit control policy and by-laws were not implemented with vigour from the beginning.”
“There are multiple factors that contributed.”
“Obviously, there are possible concerns of corruption where credit control measures were supposed to take place but were never executed. There also billing errors.”
Electricity Cuts for owing entities
Over the last week, the City of Tshwane shared on Twitter that they had disconnected entities such as The 5-star Sheraton Hotel, The Department of Water and Sanitation, Denel, as well as the State Theatre, The Department of Infrastructure Development as well as the University of Pretoria.
Location, si la! They owe us R34 mil #TshwaneYaTima #CoTRevenueCollection pic.twitter.com/hcf6uMlz2z
— City of Tshwane (@CityTshwane) February 11, 2022
READ NEXT: Minnie Dlamini and Quinton Jones officially file for divorce


